Link Financial has produced CCA and terminated my account. How to proceed?

Salient1878

I requested the CCA for a Lloyds credit card taken out in 2006 and defaulted about 4 or 5 years later.

The account was marked as a default on my file - I had a few around the same period. Since the defaults dropped off, I have kept everything 100% in order.

My aim in requesting the CCA was for them to not be able to find it due to it being 18 - 19 years old and then make a very low offer of settlement. However it took them about a month.

I stopped making payments toward the debt (made to Wescot) whilst I awaited the CCA.

Link has produced what may or may not be a legit CCA (name, address, my signature, etc), and two sets of 7 page T's and C's - one for each address they held for me along with a cover letter stating:

"The account has been terminated. The "current balance" is the total outstanding balance that is due and is payable immediately."

I was wondering how to proceed. 

Outstanding balance is £1200.

Obviously, I aim to avoid unnecessarily walking myself into court action. 

Should I write to them to acknowledge the correspondence and make low offer in full and final settlement?

Are there any implications for my credit file? 

What if Link reject the settlement offer? 

Salient1878

Here is the Link correspondence. Any advice on whether the received CCA is legit would be most welcome:

ManyWays

Has this old debt has already dropped off your credit record?
How much were you paying Westcot a month for it before you stopped? 

Salient1878

Yes the default has dropped off.

I was paying £20 a month.

Winkflower

Hi there I've recently sent 5 x cca requests and had this letter back with all of them. I'm not sure they have actually terminated them, they are all still there when I log into my lin account.i think it's there way of trying to sound scary maybe? Or divert attention from what I recieved in 5 badly reconstituted ccas with no statements of account.
I spoke to national debt line albut it today 
I'm gling to send a complain in writing for each asking fro my account to be put on pause until they can supply compliant information. Eg one hs my current address and was taken out when at my previous address.  None have a statement of accounts or interest rates.
3/5 are defaulted, I don't mind if they default the other 2.
I'm gling to ask for a pause while they comply and if not resolved go to the ombudsman.
Will see how that goes but wanted to let you know ow  irecevied the same ypur account has been terminated... which contradicted the front letter saying now enforceable.
Will be interested to see if any are terminated- I've asked on here on a different post re this and advised that dcas don't usually then sell debts on again.
Will follow with interest 
Wx 

sourcrates

When they say the account has been terminated, they are referring to the original credit card account with Lloyds TSB.

They do not mean they have closed the account on their systems and now require full payment, you can still pay this by monthly payments, or make a settlement offer, just to clarify that point.

Nothing will re-emerge on your credit file regardless of what you do here.

Salient1878

Further to this, I have made an offer of settlement to Link and am being messed about by Link and Wescot. Events so far:

23/05: Wrote to Link using a standard letter template offering £800 in full and final settlement

29/05: Link ack'd my receipt of letter and stated only "we confirm that your account is now being managed by Wescot Credit Services."

I therefore made contact with Wescot on two or three occasions. On each occasion Wescot advisedit awaoted instruction from its client Link.

19/06: In response to my request for an update Westot advised "our client’s disputes team are currently reviewing this before a further response is provided to you.vI have arranged for our collection contact to stop for 30 days until 19/07/2025 You need to let us know what’s happening before this date, if we don’t hear from you, we will contact you again."

21/06: contacted Link again - on this occasion by email to restate the offer of settlement made 23/05/25, copying Wescot in.

26/06: Link ack'd receipt and advised "we can confirm your settlement offer of £800.00 has been referred to our settlements team. A response will be provided within 48 hours."

Link are yet to contact me.

27/06: Wescot contact me by email:

"Thank you for copying us in your response to Link. We do apologise as we are still awaiting the client’s response to your request.

We have contacted the client to follow up with this and your account remains on hold.

Thank you for your offer of partial settlement of £800, however your account is eligible for a partial settlement of £ 1208.6 and this is to be paid in a lump sum.

If you will be accepting this offer, can you please let us know if the source of funds is gifts or a loan and can you also let us know if you are up to date with your household bills, we mean things like mortgage/rent, council tax, gas, electric, water, taxes, and TV licence?

If unable to accept the offer, can you please let us know how you would like to proceed with the balance?"

That is the current state of play.

Advice on how to proceed would be most welcome.

 

ManyWays

You cannot make a creditor accept a settlement offer. Do you have other debts? 

sourcrates

Salient1878 said:

Further to this, I have made an offer of settlement to Link and am being messed about by Link and Wescot. Events so far:

23/05: Wrote to Link using a standard letter template offering £800 in full and final settlement

We have contacted the client to follow up with this and your account remains on hold.

Thank you for your offer of partial settlement of £800, however your account is eligible for a partial settlement of £ 1208.6 and this is to be paid in a lump sum.

That is the current state of play.

Advice on how to proceed would be most welcome.

Yes, walk away and enjoy the fine weather, try again in 6 months.

Constant contact from you just makes you a bigger target in their eyes, and they will hold out for the £1200 as you appear too eager to engage with them.

Debt settlement requires you to play the long game, and be sporadic and non committal in your dealings with them, don`t appear keen on doing a deal, they will just plague you all the more.

Let them do the chasing, not you, and never start with your best offer, low is the way to go.

bcs7

Was the £800 settlement offer your first?

If so, I think you've made the mistake of going in far too high.
They're thinking if you can afford to pay that much (64%), then you could pay the full amount which is why they've counter offered a rather low discount (97%) in response.

I would have gone in with something around £250-£300 (20%-24%) and you may have got a counter somewhere between 55% and 80%,

As others have said it's likely going to be a long game and made longer if they believe they can get more out of you.

Salient1878

Okay, but Link has produced CCA - or what appears to be.

What's confusing me is Wescot appear to have made a partial offer of settlement prior to receiving instruction from its client Link - an offer apparently made independently whilst the Wescot account is supposed to be on hold until 19/07/25.

As for Link, after I resubmitted the offer of settlement they ack'd it and said I'd have a response in 48hrs - ive heard nothing so I'm content to leave that the ball is in their court.

It's the Wescot aspect that is confusing me. How do I play this "offer" from it?